Yet only a few weeks before, on July 10, he had already expressly assured the same friend privately: “The die is cast; I despise alike the favour and the fury of the Romans; I refuse to be reconciled with them, or to have anything whatever to do with them ... I will openly attack and destroy the whole Papal system, that pestilential quagmire of heresies; then there will be an end to the humility and consideration of which I have made a show, but which has only served to puff up the foes of the Gospel.”[62] He had also not omitted, at the same time, to bring to the knowledge of the Elector, through his same friend at Court, the promise of a guard of one hundred noblemen, recently made by Silvester von Schauenberg; he likewise begged that an intimation of the fact might be conveyed to Rome, that they might see that his safety was assured, and might then cease from threatening him with excommunication and its consequences. “Were they to drive me from Wittenberg,” he adds, “nothing would be gained, and the case would only be made worse; for my men-at-arms are stationed not only in Bohemia, but in the very centre of Germany, and will protect me should I be driven away, for they are determined to defy any assault.” “If I have these at my back then it is to be feared that I shall attack the Romanists much more fiercely from my place of safety than if I were allowed to remain in my professorship and in the service of the Prince [at Wittenberg], which is what will certainly happen unless God walls otherwise. Hitherto I have been unwilling to place the Prince in any difficulty; once expelled, all such scruples will vanish.”[63] In conclusion, he extols his great consideration for the Prince. “It is only the respect I owe my sovereign, and my regard for the interests of the University [of Wittenberg] that the Romanists have to thank for the fact that worse things have not been done by me; that they escaped so lightly they owe neither to my modesty, nor to their action and tyranny.” All the diplomacy which he cultivated with so much calculation did not, however, hinder his giving free course to the higher inspiration with which he believed himself to be endowed; the result was a series of works which may be numbered among the most effective of his controversial writings. He there fights, to employ his own language, “for Christ’s sake new battles against Satan,” as Deborah, the prophetess, fought “new wars” for Israel (Judges v. 8).[64]